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October 20, 2008
Things don't look good for the Republicans in the US given the difficult economic situation in the US for many households. It is not obvious that the Republican fear and smear campaign---the "Obama-is-a-Muslim" line of GOP attack --is going to enable McCain to catch the lead Obama has established in the polls, raising money and crowds at rallies. The Democrats look as if they are working to build a majority in Congress .
The trouble is that the talking points that paint Barack Obama as anti-American is all that attack is all they have. McCain's response to the economic crisis has been poor, the Republican brand is shot, and the concern in 2008 is health care plans, regulatory schemes and unemployment benefits. McCain's response to the structural economic crisis is more tax cuts, and these by themselves, are not enough to prevent the Republican wreckage or reflate the American economy.
Tax cuts are not enough since the shift of income shares away from wages and consumption, toward profits, has characterized the pattern of economic growth and development over the last twenty-five years. There has been a widening gap between rich and poor, or rather between capital and labor; decreased productive business investment, rising federal deficit and a skyrocketing current account deficit and declining economic growth.
Some form of job creation is needed to counteract the falloff in consumption and so help economic recovery. Barack Obama has released a "rescue plan for the middle class" that would give businesses a $3,000 refundable tax credit for each American job created and finance public works projects that the campaign estimates will create or save one million jobs.
McCain's attacks against Obama have boomeranged. The election is in 17 days, and McCain's "straight talking" express needs something to upset the dynamics as Obama keeps producing stories and events that sustain his momentum and run out the clock. McCain---"I will fight for America"---doesn't understand that a crumbling U.S. economy might change America's global stance by constraining America's freedom of action internationally. He does not sense the growing disparity between the historically hegemonic role of the US on the world stage and its diminishing capacity.
The Republicans are going to have to rebuild after 2010. Maybe they can do so by cultivating ignorance as a political strategy.
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James Ridgeway in A Jobless Rescue? at Mother Jones makes a agood point about the Paulson Plan that bailed out the US banks. He says:
And buy the consumer goods on credit.